Blood Shackles (Rebel Vampires Book 2)

by Rosemary A Johns

  I will save my family.

  So, you wanted to know if it was worth it?

  What do you reckon?

  Those babes to darkness in the Blood Life Council gave us up to…that.

  Give me a hiding every day if you have to. These memories will always plague me. Haunt my waking hours.

  But my family are real. They’re imprisoned right this moment in that…brothel in Abona.

  You know how you earn your lolly now. Has the truth been flayed raw?

  Because we sodding were.

  So let me ask you this: are all the pretty things you buy worth it?

  MAY 30

  Last night, you allowed me out for the whole night by myself.

  I’m sitting here under the bright sun of the fresco - the Manx watching – as the journal is spread out in front of me on the shining mahogany dining room table and it’s like I daydreamed it.

  Yet I can still feel the night burning in my gut.

  When I’d woken up, fluffy-headed under the duvet, I’d noticed the journal had been moved from the corner, where I’d hurled it. It’d been tidied back onto the crochet lace bedside table.

  As if it was important.

  Maybe you’d had a butchers? Because you decided to let me out that night, with the promise of no cameras or handholding. And the symbolic turning off of the bastard tracker.

  Free. Even if it was only for one night.

  I don’t have to tell you what happened.

  But me and you? Whatever this is…Stockholm Syndrome or…

  Last night, however, you gave me back something, which I’d reckoned lost: I was a true Blood Lifer, alone again in the world.

  I prowled the black, under the wide, white moon, led only by my blood. I was exultant in my anonymous freedom, camouflaged once more in the warm night dark.

  Gangs of blokes wandered the vomit splattered pavements, searching out strip clubs or brothels, kebabs or cheesy chips, cocaine or cabs home.

  Cruisers were hanging around a public khazi; I glimpsed a couple shagging against a wall in the shadows of an alley. Junkies slumped in self-induced trances, or crouched in payphones inhaling crack pipes. One bint, who was off her nut on ketamine, drooled and dodged honking cabs.

  This was London.

  My London.

  Where no one knew or cared who I was and I was safe even in the darkest of worlds.

  I slipped your iPod out of the pocket of my jacket, worming in the earbuds. After all these months of sensory deprivation, it was blinding.

  But your taste in music? It’s so bland it may as well be white noise. What you need are the greats: Billy Fury and THE FOUR JAYS, Jimi Hendrix and The Sex Pistols.

  So I’d uploaded them.

  Because your passwords..? They hadn’t been difficult for a bloke like me to memorise from a glance over your shoulder.

  In the dark, I put on The Rolling Stones. It was like coming alive. Around me, London took on a psychedelia - a clash of experimental chaos.

  I ran and ran and… Alessandro.

  My hands curled into fists, as I jumped benches and scaled walls.

  The music spun me back to the summer of 1968, when I’d discovered my Blood Lifer family. The Stone’s Their Satanic Majesties Request had been Alessandro’s favourite in his obsessive vinyl collection.

  Alessandro was my mate: my first and only.

  Yet I bloody got him killed.

  I stopped running, panting for breath. I rested my forehead against the cool brick of an alley.

  See, there’s the problem: the last time I played at hero, someone else paid the price. I tried to be the leader and I cocked it up; I’m scared I will this time too. I incited the innocent to rise against his tyrant of an Author.

  I incited Alessandro to his death.

  Until I met Hartford and Donovan, I was alone.

  With Kathy I was always a Blood Lifer in a First Lifer world. Now I have mates again – family - and I can’t bugger it up.

  When the otherworldly harpsichord started of “In Another Land”, I forced myself on towards a park, which was dark with leathery-leaved plane trees.

  When a desolate wind swept across an empty plain on the track, I felt it keenly - the loneliness and dislocation. It plunged me back into the despair of Abona. Then began the drumbeat. Like a heartbeat. A coming alive.

  I was sprinting now, desperate to reach those trees, with an animalistic instinct for shelter and panicked flight.

  And that’s when I thought of you. And I calmed, slowing, until I was jogging again.

  In this strange, new world I’d found myself in, yours was the only hand I’d had to hold. I’d reckoned it’d been proprietorial. A sign of ownership. That I wasn’t the nancy boy type to need hand holding. Only maybe the truth was I did.

  Maybe the truth was you did too.

  Once, when I was visiting London from our home in Watford with my papa, I let go of his hand. I didn’t realise it straight away, but it was nearly the end of me.

  By letting go, I risked losing everything.

  We were on Regent Street outside Bassano’s, surrounded by a gaggle of grave men in overcoats and sober suits, with side-whiskers or neat beards, which ran under their chins, who were debating the relative merits of using paper or glass negatives.

  Paper had revolutionised the photographic process by producing not one negative but hundreds: multiple identical twins. A man’s youth enslaved for eternal parade.

  I half-listened, restlessly shifting under the molten summer sun. Sweat trickled under my collar.

  Papa was extolling glass coated with collodion (gun cotton dissolved in ether). It sharpened the prints to mimic real life: photography not as art. But truth.

  Folks were passing in and out of the studio in a steady stream to record forever the rites of passage: a nurse with a babe in arms, who’d achieved the feat of sitting unaided and a lanky youth (not much older than me), who in his shiny new suit was celebrating his first job.

  Then my little fingers slipped out of papa’s larger hand in the heat of his debate.

  And I was free.

  At first, I stood there, obedient. In these London expeditions, I was papa’s joint explorer. Today, however, in the height of the afternoon sun, I was narked because papa had insisted on holding my hand, like I was not yet in breeches.

  Papa had blamed the Season, saying he didn’t want me to be swept way. Yet I’d also heard him muttering to mama his promise to keep tight hold of precious Light because kids were being snatched for unnatural crimes.

  When I’d asked papa about it, however, he’d blushed in a way I’d never seen before.

  Papa had always urged me to seek out knowledge. To question everything. And what I’d learnt that day was all adults had secrets.

  I stared around at the thronging street.

  It was terraced and stuccoed, with parades of shops. Tides of carriages washed down the dusty, wooden thoroughfare, rattling and clattering; their panels glittered and the flanks of their horses gleamed. I caught glimpses of golden tresses, lilac muslins and cravats in the cushioned interiors. Blokes, birds and kids of every class and type - duchesses, foreign counts and schoolboys - chattered, laughed, lounged and ebbed and flowed along the street, free to explore its delights.

  I peeked once more up at my papa, who was still intent on his debate. He hadn’t cottoned on that he’d broken his promise to keep hold of his precious Light.

  Then I melted away silently into the crowds, allowing them to carry me along. I figured I could sightsee and be back before papa even missed me.

  I was heady with the excitement of Regent Street. I’ve always wanted more – more than childhood. London. England. The world. First Life. My own skin. Ruby. More than… Sometimes I don’t even bloody know.

  Then, I thought Regent Street was it, with its fancy shops and temptations.

  I wandered from glass-plate window to glass-plate, passing footmen leaning in the stores’ doorways. I gazed at the rich, paisle
y patterned shawls, tiered cape jackets and ribboned or feathered bonnets on pegs, before resting my fingers against a confectioner’s window. My stomach growled at the glorious sight: piles of buns, cakes, bon-bons, jellies, preserves and round, glistening barley-sugar cages. I forced myself away from the delicious treats, jostled as I tried to have a gander at the itinerant vendors, who were calling out to passers-by in jovial patter, their wares laid out on the kerb: prints, stain-cleaning pastes and mosaic gold chains.

  Fascinated, I was listening to an Italian boy grinding a piano organ, when I noticed a dealer hawking spaniel pups at the lamppost. He had one of the tiny things captured in his colossal, weathered hands, and it was kicking its front legs piteously.

  I struggled through the crowds, weighing up papa’s reaction if I returned with one of the back-and-white bundles with dark, sad peepers stowed in my pocket. The dog could be my mate: I didn’t have one of those. I only hesitated because papa might drown it; I wasn’t sure - for the first time - if I trusted adults anymore.

  That’s when I felt the fingers curl around my arm.

  I stiffened. ‘Papa..?’

  ‘That’s right, my pretty little boy. How bad you are for running off.’ Terror, like I’d never experienced before. That wasn’t papa. Too nasal. Too harsh. The bloke smelled wrong too: mildewy. And the hand was huge in a too neat glove. I tried to wrench away, but the man’s grip tightened... Snatched for unnatural crimes… I swung my fist, catching the bastard a hook under his bearded chin. ‘You wretched rat!’

  The man, who wore a seedy linen suit and whose oily hair was smartly parted (at least I’d knocked off his top hat), caught my two wrists in his one strong hand. Then he hauled me up by my middle; my legs kicked ineffectually. He snatched up his top hat, ramming it back onto his nut.

  The spaniel seller sniggered, as if this was all part of a shared adult joke.

  Hot tears sprang into my peepers. Why couldn’t he see – why couldn’t everyone see – I was being kidnapped?

  ‘Papa! Papa--’

  ‘Shut up, you little…’ the bloke hissed, squeezing me, until it was painful.

  Still I didn’t stop hollering, ‘Help! Help! Papa--’

  At last, thank Christ in heaven, a gentleman in quilted overcoat, who was resting on a fancy silver walking stick, tapped the wanker on the shoulder with an imperious knuckle. ‘See here, my good man, what is this rumpus about?’

  ‘My papa--’

  The tosser slapped his hand over my mouth. Then his wily mug smoothed into an expression of utter consternation. ‘Such a wicked lad. Incorrigible. The worst of liars. A runaway.’

  At once the kindly gentleman’s concern transformed into a stern frown.

  I wilted. Because wasn’t the wanker right? I had run away. This was my fault.

  I stopped struggling, although I couldn’t stop the tears, which were now mostly of shame.

  This seemed to confirm what the gentleman was looking for because he gave a curt nod. ‘My apologies, sir. But you hear such things just now. I was only doing my civic duty. Still, boys are cunning creatures. Quite despicable. I hope you don’t intend to spare the rod?’

  The kidnapper’s mouth slid into a nasty curve of a leer. ‘Have no concern on that head, sir.’

  I lay limply in the man’s arms, as he dragged me off Regent Street, further from my papa and towards Piccadilly, on a long, ugly road.

  It was as if every step, I was lost a little more to a darkness, which I hadn’t known existed until that moment.

  I’d wanted more: knowledge and the adult world.

  Well, looked like I was going to bloody get it, didn’t it?

  We passed a dark livery, coming to a brick and tile Stuart house, which was attached to it.

  I could see pale kids (boys the same as me), peering down out of the windows. The terror returned: once I was trapped inside that Stuart house, I wasn’t getting out again.

  ‘Home sweet home. You’re to be my bitch’s shadow.’ The kidnapper was stroking my hair, like I was his doll.

  No one had ever touched me in quite that manner before: it made me shudder. So the next time the kidnapper’s hand moved down to my mush, I turned my nut, catching his fleshy palm between my gnashers. And bit.

  The bastard let out a roar, like a bull, as he shook me. But I wouldn’t let go. He dropped me to the muddy pavement, clouting me, until I saw stars. Gasping, I legged it.

  There were a few steps of intoxicating freedom. Until the tosser tripped me.

  The man boxed my ears, as he hauled me inside, still fighting for all I was worth.

  ‘Let go…’

  My kidnapper threw me to the tiled floor, and I hit my knees hard.

  When I looked up through my tear blurred peepers, I thought for a moment I must be facing a looking glass, except…this other boy was dressed in a flimsy cotton shirt. And no kecks. His peepers were rimmed with kohl and his lips tinted with rouge, like some beautiful boy-girl. Except one of his peepers was purpled and he was ghost-white.

  He was some posh gentleman’s fetishized fantasy.

  Shocked out of my own distress, I pushed myself up, as I stared at my twin, whilst he studied me.

  ‘Look what I’ve found, my little bitch, a twin Mary-Ann for you. Your shadow. The punters’ll pay a pretty penny for the two of you together. You train him up good and quick, you hear?’

  I knew bad things, immoral acts and unnatural crimes were going to be done to me, even if I didn’t know what they were.

  I tried not to show my fear, yet I knew I was trembling.

  ‘Those threads? Kid like him? He’s not workhouse or off the street. No foundling or orphan.’ I don’t know why I was surprised by my twin’s soft Spitalfields accent, as if I was expecting to hear my own voice reflected back at me. ‘So where’d you get this one from then, Mr Dabs?’

  Smack - I flinched, when Mr Dabs clobbered the boy in the mush – smack - before copping him a mouse in the other peeper. ‘Never you mind where. He’s mine now.’

  I bristled. ‘My papa--’

  ‘Ain’t your papa now. This is your home.’ I gazed round at the low-ceilinged room, which was hung with heavy purple drapes and had a tatty chaise longue and oak cupboard. ‘I’m your papa and you…have been very naughty.’ When he shook his sore hand, I was dead proud of the inflamed scarlet bite. ‘Little bitch, fetch the cane.’ My insides froze. I stood still though, whilst the other boy reluctantly opened the cupboard. When my twin pulled out a long rattan cane with a crooked handle, which looked like it could thrash you half to death, I took a step back. ‘You, brat,’ Mr Dabs pointed at the end of the chaise longue, ‘lower your breeches and bend over.’ When I didn’t move, Mr Dabs sucked his yellowing teeth in irritation. The other boy was holding the cane, like it was loathsome even to touch, which told me he’d often felt its bite. Our gazes met; there was something dark and questioning in his, which I didn’t understand. But he didn’t hand the cane over to Mr Dabs. ‘Come on, little bitch, or do you want a thrashing too?’

  My twin startled, yet he still hesitated. Then I could see it: the moment he came to a decision. He squared his shoulders. Then he gave me a cheeky half-smile, before he brought down the cane in a full swishing crack on Mr Dab’s sly mush.

  Mr Dabs howled and crumpled.

  ‘Scarper!’ The boy yelled, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me to the front door, ‘Go on then.’

  Shocked, I stumbled out into the light, expecting to see my twin behind me.

  But he was slamming the door…imprisoning himself with the enraged Mr Dabs.

  I legged it as fast as I ever had, back to Regent Street and Bassano’s. And back to my distraught papa, who furious, grabbed me sharply by the shoulders.

  When papa caught sight of my swollen mush, however, he clasped me close, whilst I wrapped my arms around his waist. I no longer cared how much of a baby I looked, as I sobbed.

  ‘You let go, Light,’ papa said softly, allowing me to hold onto him, as the t
ears fell. ‘You let go of my hand.’

  For me, that afternoon on Regent Street was only a brief glimpse of a dark world, before I twisted away.

  I don’t reckon, however, that my rent boy twin ever escaped. As if he were my whipping boy, he lived out my planned fate.

  That memory didn’t come fresh re-lived to my mind, until I was slouched last night on a bench in the park under the plane trees, the scruffy crows shuffling in the branches, opposite a rainbow-bruised tramp.

  I thought of holding your hand and that sparked those past ghosts.

  All right then, so maybe my whipping boy lived out his First Life longer than I survived, although for his sake, I hope he didn’t. His best prospect was to have ended up as some rich man’s toy.

  I guess that means I truly am his twin now, doesn’t it?

  When the spotters came hassling to register me as homeless, I dived over the fence to find a 24 hour café.

  I hunkered down over a coffee with the cabbies, blood-splattered butchers from the markets, rickshaw drivers, whose vehicles were abandoned half-on, half-off the pavement outside and the ropey looking hookers, who were knackered from a night of sucking and shagging. Outside a noisy street cleaner swept past, clearing away London’s detritus: pig heads, sycamore leaves, coffee cups, chip cartons, chewing gum and ciggie butts.

  I’d bought myself a fag at a convenience store but threw it in the gutter after one drag. It felt wrong in my hand.

  Your e-cig it was then.

  I puffed and drank and in that café of night walkers, I thought.

  I knew I should return to you. I could feel the pull of dawn and could see the purple bruising to the night sky, which warned of the rising sun.

  Yet I was crippled by sudden desperation.

  I smoked my e-cig, as if stuck to that plastic chair, like I’d never get my arse out of it and back to you, even if the sun’s rays shone clear through the glass and melted me to the seat.

  Haven’t you ever wanted to end it? No memories to haunt. No guilt. Nothing to strive for or endure? But I made a promise to Kathy before she died that afterwards I’d live.